a soundtrack

RUNAWAY by Del Shannon
As I walk along I wonder a-what went wrong
With our love, a love that was so strong
And as I still walk on, I think of the things we’ve done
Together, a-while our hearts were young
I’m a-walkin’ in the rain
Tears are fallin’ and I feel the pain
Wishin’ you were here by me
To end this misery
And I wonder
I wa-wa-wa-wa-wonder
Why
Ah-why-why-why-why-why she ran away
And I wonder where she will stay
My little runaway, run-run-run-run-runaway
—— Musitron solo ——
I’m a-walkin’ in the rain
Tears are fallin’ and I feel the pain
Wishin’ you were here by me
To end this misery
And I wonder
I wa-wa-wa-wa-wonder
Why
Ah-why-why-why-why-why she ran away
And I wonder where she will stay
My little runaway, run-run-run-run-runaway
A-run-run-run-run-runaway

6 thoughts on “a soundtrack”

  1. Runaway was used the theme song to the excellent gritty cop show Crime Story, set in ’60s Chicago and made in the ’80s by Miami Vice creator Michael Mann. The pilot was directed by Abel Ferrara, and is vintage Ferrara. Dennis Farina was great as the tough cop antihero, who seems to be slowly losing his mind. Anthony John Denison was memorable as Farina’s unusually nasty gangster nemesis. The whole series is still floating around on video if you look hard enough. It kicks ass over pretty much every other cop show I’ve seen – better than Homicide, NYPD Blue, The Bill, Law and Order, etc.
    As for Runaway, it’s a great song but the wa-wa-wa-was are hard to sing.

  2. I’m using it as a soundtrack for an RPG which is basically Stand By Me – the game. It’s very soundtracky in a way that, say, Pony Time by Chubby Checker isn’t.
    A player has supplied a cover by The Misfits in which the wa wa wa is replaced by a long, low, wooooooon – derrr which is much easier to sing.

  3. It was also on the soundtracks to Good Will Hunting (1997), Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993), Les roseaux sauvages (1994), Running Scared (1980) Street Hero (1984) and – of course – American Graffiti (1973).
    It’s as soundtracky as a melonfarmer. And a great song to boot. Hello Mary Lou by Ricky Nelson is an even better, even more sountracky song that’s contemporary to Runaway, but it’s already been definitively used in the soundtrack to the underrated horror flick Prom Night 2 (highly recommended, Mr Morgue).

  4. Funnily enough, ‘Crime Story’ is the first thing I think of when I hear ‘Runaway’. Never watched it much, I think I remember lights reflected off a car bonnet in the titles.

  5. Well, it reminds me of my first boyfriend. He really liked to listen to one of those “Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers” cassettes in the car and it had one which sampled a substantial portion of that song.
    He’d sing along all high and squeaky, trying to sound like the singer and it bugged me *so much*!
    Errr…so yeah. Crime story.

  6. See, whereas it reminds *me* of this science fiction short story where these two street gangs have a doo-wop battle over a turf violation, with the losing group having to drink the other’s urine or something – and one of the groups does “Runaway”, and has their falsetto do the deedly organ bits, to which the crowd when wild.
    (It ends with one of the friends of the narrator being taken by a flying saucer, if that helps anyone remember it. 🙂
    It was pretty good, from what I recall.

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